Once a month ECPC is contacted by her grandma (Christ Covenant Church) simply to ask, “How can we be praying for you?” In case you weren’t aware, ECPC’s mom is Uptown Church (Uptown CLT, NC), and our mom’s mom is Christ Covenant Church (Matthews, NC). I always enjoy receiving this inquiry from grandma because it is an invitation to rummage anew in the well-stocked pantry of God’s Word. I want our grandmother to feast upon Scripture as she exercises her privilege to pray for us, and I desperately want her to intercede on our behalf by pleading with God to make what’s revealed in His Word manifest and substantially true in our local and particular church and ECLT community.

Here’s what I asked grandma to pray for in December:

1. God has definitively told ECPC to thoroughly, enthusiastically, habitually, and manifestly embrace the truth that the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are those who turn and become like children. Pray that ECPC would “live life with such freedom and joy that uptight Christians will doubt our salvation” (Steve Brown).
2. Pray that ECPC would RELISH the REALITY that the Lord our God is in our midst, and that He is a mighty one who will save. Pray that ECPC would DELIGHT and be everyday in AWE of the TRUTH that God will rejoice over us with gladness; and that He will quiet us by His love; and that He will exult over us with loud singing.
3. Pray that we would be inveterate bird watchers (noticing that the birds neither sow nor reap, and that the birds have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them). Pray that ECPC would deeply ponder and embrace that we are much more valuable to God than the birds! Pray that ECPC would consider the lilies (meditating on how they grow, and realizing that they neither toil nor spin,yet even King Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like even one of the lilies!). Please pray for us like Epaphras (praying as one of us, and as a fellow servant of Christ Jesus …always struggling on our behalf in your prayers, that we may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God). Ask our Heavenly Father to put in our heads and in our hearts a very sincere knowledge and acceptance of the truth that God knows what we need, and we can trust Him the way He tells us to in Proverbs 3:5-6. Pray that we would compulsively desire to simply seekGod’s Kingdom, and that we would delight to trust in God for all the necessary things (and whatever particular additional benefits God is pleased to provide for ECPC)…for it is our Father’s good pleasure to give us the Kingdom.
4. Pray that God would put in us the zeal and courage of Harriet Tubman – who sold her possessions, and gave to the needy; providing for herself with “moneybags” that did not grow old, and with a treasure in the heavens that could never fail (where no thief approaches and no moth destroys). Pray for ECPC’s treasure to be Jesus – for where our treasure is, there will our heart will be also.